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Last week we talked about Vipassana which is an awareness-based meditation. And today we will talk about concentration based meditations. Vedanta, Mantra, visualization. These are all concentration based meditations and can be extremely productive for a beginner.
What is a concentration-based meditation?
In these meditations, you teach your mind to focus on just one object. One thought, one idea for a sustained period of time. With the eventual goal being that your mind becomes so subtle that it can focus on the infinite formless divine. And this act of the individual mind focusing and thereby merging with the universal mind is yoga or the purpose of human existence. But you don’t need to believe in the theology of all this to just train your mind to become one-pointed and realize the tremendous benefits of that improved concentration in every aspect of life.
How do you do a concentration-based meditation?
There are three common objects of concentration which work very well for people. The first is the breath and to do a breath-based meditation, all you need to do is to follow some of the same things that we’ve talked about. You sit cross-legged with your back erect. Or any other pose which allows you a state of full alertness. You sit with your eyes closed and you focus on the breath coming in your nose. And then going out of your nose. Your breath coming in your nose and then going out of your nose. For 30 minutes, you just focus on this breath. Coming in and going out and nothing else. To the exclusion of every other thought and idea. That’s all, that’s a breath-based concentration meditation.
Now some people find this idea of just focusing on a breath a little dry. So what works very well for them is visualization. And visualization based meditations are typically visualizing an image which gives you an uplifting or a purified or a holy feeling. And these are typically images of the Buddha, the Christ, Mohammed, Gurus, other holy men. Or if this doesn’t work for you, you can also choose an image of anything that uplifts you. If you’re pulled to music you could choose a guitar for instance. If you’re pulled to art you could choose an artist’s image that you really like. Any kind of image which gives your heart a positive feeling is okay for a visualization meditation. And once again you’re following some of the same principles. You’re sitting cross-legged, erect, eyes closed and you’re visualizing this image either here in the place between your two eyes, your third eye area. And that is a very good place to concentrate if you’re of an analytical nature. Or you choose the center of your heart if you’re of an emotional nature.
You’ll know very quickly once you start meditating which area makes sense for you. And when you are sitting with your eyes closed you are just focusing on that image in either of these two places. And for 30 minutes again you are trying to concentrate on this image at the exclusion of every other image and that is visualization-based meditation. If neither breath nor visualization works for you the third kind of meditation is mantra meditation. Unfortunately, mantra meditation has got a lot of religious connotations. And also people have made it sound very esoteric with talks about this is your personal mantra, granted especially by your personal guru. All this is unnecessary as you understand the theoretical construct you understand that the mantra is just an aid for concentration or a tool for concentration. And it can be any word that you repeat continuously in your mind either verbally or in your mind for a sustained period of time.
When I started meditating I was very inspired by the Buddha’s story. So I would just repeat the word Buddha‘ for 30 minutes and initially verbally and then in my mind. Later, when I understood the word ‘Om’ a little better I started meditating on the word or repeating the word ‘Om’. But it could be anything it could be ‘Amen’ if you are so inclined. Or it could be even any other more simplified word. Anything that you do for a period of time allows you to just focus on that one word at the exclusion of everything else. And that’s kind of the secret behind mantra-based meditation. So it’s either the breath or a visual, or an image or a mantra. And that kind of forms the construct for a concentration-based meditation.
What are the benefits of it?
After you start practicing concentration based meditation for a while you start seeing that your mind is more and more single-pointed in every aspect of life. And that has tremendous benefits. So for me for instance, after about two or three months of starting this which is 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the night, a few years ago I started to see that I was calculating things very, very fast. And my work required some kind of mathematical inclination from a business perspective and I could just see that I was just doing numbers in my head at a much, much faster pace than I ever did before. Slowly it kind of evolved and I started to see that my thoughts became more and more subtle when I was in meditation. So instead of concentrating on the Buddha’s image for instance, automatically my mind started to concentrate more on his qualities, you know, so the qualities that I’d read about like determination and compassion etc. And then over a period of time even that became kind of merged into a more choice-less awareness. So in a way, the use of a tool in the Buddha’s image or his story etc, just disappeared.
I just kind of like had a more concentrated, like a feeling of awareness. Rather than a particular object and that kind of like became my meditation. So kind of it’s not a static journey, it keeps evolving and evolves on its own. But I can promise that over just a period of time you’ll start seeing the benefits in improved concentration in many aspects of your life and slowly your life starts changing as a result.
I hope this was helpful and as always I’ll see you next week.
This is Karan Bajaj and I want to offer you my free meditation video course today.
Subscribe to my channel for your free startup and meditation course and 3-5x weekly videos on startups, success models and writing, https://www.youtube.
